The Ottoman Empire: a Historical Encyclopedia [2 Volumes]

by Kia, Mehrdad;

  The Safavid Empire was under constant threat by the Ottomans in the west and the Uzbeks in the east. The Safavid armies were not, however, prepared to take on these two formidable foes. The Safavid cavalry, dominated by the Qizilbash tribal units, was not adequately armed, trained, and organized to face the challenges posed by the more advanced Ottoman army. Worse, Qizilbash cavalry units owed their loyalty to their tribal chiefs rather than to their royal master, the shah. Time was needed to reorganize the military and administrative structure of the Safavid state.

  In Istanbul the Ottomans, who kept a close watch on internal developments in Iran, recognized the weakness and vulnerability of the Safavid state. The Ottoman war party advocated a massive invasion of Iran with the aim of regaining the territory that had been conquered during the reign of Süleyman I (r. 1520–1566). The invasion of Iran allowed the Ottomans to amass booty and increase the revenue of the central government. The conquest of Azerbaijan and the Caucasus also provided the Ottoman Empire with the opportunity to establish direct political, military, and commercial contact with its principal ally in the east, the Uzbeks, who viewed the Shia Safavids as the principal threat to their domination of Central Asia.

  The war party was supported by the ulema, who viewed the Shia Safavids as heretics deserving of death and destruction. The military campaign in the east, which began in 1578, was also promoted by the pro-Venetian faction inside the sultan’s harem, who preferred a war against Iran to another military operation against Venice in the west. As in the past, the Ottoman army was successful at first. The Safavid forces withdrew into the interior of their territory, while the Georgian princes who had accepted the suzerainty of the Safavid shah defected to the Ottoman camp. Ottoman armies captured Georgia, Armenia, Karabagh, Daghistan, and Shirvan. The initial victories against the Safavids in the Caucasus sealed the fate of the grand vizier, Sokullu Mehmed, who had opposed another futile and costly campaign in the east. In October 1579 the grand vizier was murdered.

  With support from the Uzbeks, who attacked Khorasan, the Ottomans forced Shah Abbas to sue for peace in March 1590. The victory over the Safavids and the conquest of the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, and Kurdistan were celebrated in Istanbul. The size of the empire had expanded, and booty and taxes from the newly conquered territories had revived the treasury. The conclusion of military campaigns against Iran also freed the Ottoman armies to confront the looming threat posed by the Habsburgs. As long as the Ottomans were fighting the Safavids, the sultan and his advisers had maintained peace with the Habsburgs.

  Shah Abbas I the Great (r. 1588–1629) was the most accomplished of all the monarchs of the Safavid dynasty, which ruled Iran from 1501 to 1722. (The Walters Art Museum)

  The humiliating treaty he signed with the Ottomans in 1590 bought Shah Abbas badly needed time and allowed him to reorganize the Safavid army. In creating his new war machine, Shah Abbas reduced the size of the tribal cavalry and created a personal bodyguard force of 3,000, a 10,000-man cavalry, and a 12,000-man infantry-artillery corps supported by 500 cannons. These units were paid and trained through the royal treasury. The new infantry corps of tofangchis (riflemen) was modeled after the Ottoman janissaries, and its members were recruited primarily from young Georgian gholams (slaves) who had converted to Islam. Armed with cannons and rifles, the new army was loyal to the shah, rather than to a tribe, and consequently provided the shah with crucial support as he tried to reduce the power of the Qizilbash chiefs. For example, the Georgian gholam commander, Allahverdi Khan, participated in the execution of the powerful Qizilbash chief Morshed Qoli Khan Ostajlu, who viewed himself as the power behind the throne. In return for his support for the shah, Allahverdi Khan was allowed to emerge as the most powerful individual in the Safavid Empire after Shah Abbas. Shah Abbas also reformed the Safavid central administration, putting it on a new footing. The Safavid administrative structure was based on the participation of several distinct ethnolinguistic elements. The first element was the Persians, who dominated the bureaucracy. The second was the Turks, namely the Qizilbash cavalry units who had constituted the military backbone of the Safavid state from its very inception. The final element was the Georgians, Armenians, and Circassians, who hailed from the Caucasus. They were mostly recruited as slave soldiers and officers.

  By 1597 Shah Abbas was ready to strike. The shah’s principal objective in the east was to defeat the Uzbeks and force them out of Khorasan. In February 1598 the Uzbek leader, Abdullah Khan, died. The death of the Uzbek khan was followed by interdynastic warfare among the contenders to the Uzbek throne. The khan’s death and the civil war that followed it provided Shah Abbas with a golden opportunity to attack the Uzbeks. The Safavid forces defeated the Uzbeks on August 9, 1598. Shortly after this impressive victory, the Safavid shah triumphantly entered Herat in present-day northwestern Afghanistan. After a decade of Uzbek rule, Iranian sovereignty over Khorasan was restored.

  After defeating the Uzbeks, Shah Abbas moved his capital from Qazvin to Isfahan in present-day central Iran. The Safavid monarch was determined to convert his new capital to one of the most beautiful cities in the world. He embarked on a construction campaign, building bridges, tree-lined avenues, palaces, mosques, madrasahs, and magnificent squares. Today the Allahverdi Khan Bridge, the tree-lined avenues, the Chahar Bagh, and the large rectangular square, Meydan-e Shah, surrounded by the Āli Qāpu Palace, Masjed-e Sheikh Lotfollah (Mosque of Sheikh Lotfollah), and Masjad-e Shah (Mosque of the Shah), are reminders of Isfahan’s beauty and majesty as the capital of the Safavid Empire. Englishman John Cartwright, who visited the Safavid capital, Isfahan, around 1601, described the Iranian shah as follows:

  This Prince is very absolute both in perfection of his body and his mind (but that he is in religion a professed Mohammadan), excellently composed in the one, and honourably disposed in the other. Of an indifferent stature, neither too high, nor too low, his countenance very stern, his eyes fierce and piercing, his colour swarthy, his moustaches on his upper lip long, with his beard cut close to his chin, expressing his martial disposition and exorable nature, that at first a man would think to have nothing in him, but mischief and cruelty. And yet he is of nature courteous and affable, easy to be seen and spoken with all. (Blow: 75)

  Shah Abbas’s next project was to drive the Ottomans out of Azerbaijan and Armenia. In 1603 the Safavid monarch felt sufficiently strong to move against the Ottomans and retake the provinces his predecessors had lost. The Safavid forces scored a major victory at Sufian near Tabriz, the capital of Iranian Azerbaijan. Moving his forces against the Ottomans at blazing speed and catching Ottoman garrisons in Azerbaijan, the Caucasus, and eastern Anatolia by surprise, Shah Abbas captured Tabriz and Nakhchivan. He then pushed into eastern Anatolia and southern Caucasus, laying siege to Yerevan and Kars, which surrendered to him. Using Armenia as his base, Shah Abbas invaded and occupied the entire eastern Caucasus as far north as Shirvan.

  The crisis caused by the campaigns of Shah Abbas coincided with the death of Mehmed III (r. 1595–1603) and the accession of Ahmed I (r. 1603–1617) in Istanbul. The new Ottoman sultan mobilized a large force of 100,000 against a Safavid force of 62,000. The decisive battle between Ottoman and Iranian forces was fought near Lake Urumiyyeh (Urmia) in present-day northwestern Iran on September 9, 1605. The smaller Safavid army scored an impressive victory against the larger Ottoman force. Some 20,000 Ottoman soldiers lost their lives on the battlefield. The victory liberated Iran and the Safavid monarchy from “the stigma of inferiority” to the Ottomans (Sykes: 2:178). In addition to Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, the Safavids captured Kurdistan as far west as Diyarbakir in southeastern Anatolia. The Safavids also added northern Iraq, including the city of Mosul, as well as central and southern Iraq, including the cities of Baghdad, Najaf, and Karbala, to their territorial conquests. The victory over the Sunni Turks and the conquest of important Shia religious centers in southern Iraq enhanced the prestige and popularity of Shah Abbas among his people, who viewed the
Ottoman state as their existential enemy. The defeat undermined Ottoman rule in Anatolia. Kurdish tribal chiefs defected and a new series of celāli (jelāli) revolts erupted, particularly in Syria, where the Kurds staged an uprising against the sultan.

  The Ottomans could not allow the Shia heretics from Iran to undermine the authority of the sultan in the eyes of his Arab and Kurdish subjects. No alternative remained for Ahmed I but to mobilize a second army that would suppress the celāli revolts and crush Shah Abbas and his armies. The Ottoman commander assigned this difficult mission was Kuyucu (Kuyuju) Murad Pasha, who swept through Anatolia, capturing and massacring celāli rebels and their sympathizers. By the summer of 1608 the ruthless Ottoman commander had crushed the celālis. He then moved against the main Safavid army.

  As the large Ottoman force moved toward eastern Anatolia, Shah Abbas ordered his troops to fill water wells, burn the harvest, and force the evacuation of the local population. As the Safavid army retreated, thousands of villagers, mostly Armenians, were forced out of their homes as they marched eastward to the interior of Iran. Many were never allowed to return. Instead, the shah ordered them to reside in various provinces of his vast empire. Those who were forced to settle in the Caspian provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran perished en masse from malaria. Those who were moved to the new Safavid capital of Isfahan fared better. The Safavid shah built them a city, named New Julfa, across from his capital on the banks of the Zayandehrud River, where they settled and helped Shah Abbas to implement his policy of diverting Iranian silk exports from Ottoman routes.

  Despite his earlier success, Murad Pasha could not dislodge the Safavid forces from eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan. With his death in 1611 the Ottoman offensive came to an abrupt end. Recognizing the change in the Iranian military capabilities and the determination of the Safavid shah to hold his newly gained territories, the Ottoman Empire agreed to a peace treaty with Iran, which was signed in November 1612. According to the new treaty, the sultan accepted the Iranian conquest of Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, while the shah agreed to send the sultan “two hundred loads of silk annually” and to support the Ottoman government’s efforts to check Russian incursions into the Caucasus (Sykes: 2:179). Despite the peace treaty, border skirmishes continued, and Shah Abbas reneged on his promise to send the loads of silk. Instead, he organized a campaign against Georgia. The sultan responded in 1616 by dispatching an Ottoman force to lay siege to Yerevan in Armenia. This Ottoman campaign proved to be a disaster. Thousands of Ottoman troops froze to death as they tried to retreat during the harsh winter of the south Caucasus.

  During the short reign of Osman II (r. 1618–1622), the Ottomans sent a large force to capture the city of Tabriz, the capital of Iranian Azerbaijan. This army, however, suffered severe losses in September 1618 at Pol-e Shekasteh. As it continued to push toward the interior of Iran, Shah Abbas agreed to renew the peace treaty of 1612. The Safavids received all the Iranian territory lost to Selim I and a reduction of the amount of silk to be sent to the sultan, from 200 loads of silk to 100.

  Having freed himself from the threats posed by the Ottomans in the west and the Uzbeks in the east, Shah Abbas shifted his focus to the south. Since the earlier part of the 16th century, the rivalry among the Dutch, the English, and the Portuguese over control of the lucrative trade with India had brought European merchants and navies to the Persian Gulf. In 1507 the Portuguese had seized the island of Hormuz (Hormoz), and they also had built a fort at Shahru, a fishing village on the northern shores of the Persian Gulf near the Straits of Hormuz. Shahru was renamed Gomru (Portuguese: Comorão or Cambarão). Shah Abbas used European rivalry to his advantage, and with the support of the English expelled the Portuguese from Gomru in 1615. Then in 1622, with support from the English navy, the Safavid monarch seized the island of Hormuz. In celebration of these impressive victories, Gomru/Comorão was renamed Bandar-e Abbas (Port of Abbas). Today Bandar-e Abbas serves as the capital of the Iranian province of Hormozgan. Shah Abbas I died at his palace at Ashraf in the northern Iranian province of Mazandaran on January 19, 1629, after ruling for 41 years.

  See also: Sultans: Ahmed I; Mehmed III; Murad IV; Mustafa I; Osman II

  Further Reading

  Blow, David. Shah Abbas: The Ruthless King Who Became an Iranian Legend. London: I. B. Tauris, 2009.

  Eskandar Beg Monshi. History of Shah Abbas the Great (Tarikh-e Alamara-ye Abbasi). Translated by Roger M. Savory. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978.

  Naima, Mustafa (Mustafa Naim). Annals of the Turkish Empire from 1591 to 1659 of the Christian Era. Translated by Charles Fraser. New York: Arno Press, 1973.

  Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

  Sykes, Sir Percy. History of Persia. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1951.

  Administration, Central

  In the Ottoman Empire the sultan stood at the top of the power pyramid. He was both the temporal and spiritual head of the state, who drew his authority from the Islamic law (șeriat) and imperial law (kānun). He was obligated to preserve the peace, security, and stability of the empire he ruled. The government itself was an extension of the sultan’s private household; government officials were the personal servants of their royal master and were appointed and dismissed in accordance with the sultan’s command.

  The administration of justice constituted the most important duty of an Ottoman sultan. The failure to protect his subjects from injustice could justify the overthrow of a sultan. The palace constituted the brain center of the empire. In the Ottoman Empire the grand vizier administered the daily affairs of the empire from a section of the palace called divān-i hümāyun, or the imperial council, which served as the highest deliberative organ of the Ottoman government. According “to Mehmed II’s law code, the grand vizier” (vizier-i azam or sadr-i azam) was “the head of the viziers and commanders,” who in all matters acted as “the Sultan’s absolute deputy” (Ágoston: 11). He appointed all officials in both the central and provincial administrations. Beginning in the 17th century the grand vizier’s official residence or Bab-i Āli (High Gate), called the Sublime Porte by Europeans, was synonymous with Ottoman government.

  Several times a week, at fixed times, the ministers met to listen to complaints from the subjects of the sultan. The council comprised the grand vizier, who acted as the personal representative of the sultan, and his cabinet, known as the viziers of the dome because they met in the domed chamber of the Topkapi Palace. Those attending included the chief of chancellery, or lord privy seal, nişānci (nishānji), who controlled the tuğra (tughrā) (the official seal of the Ottoman state) and drew up and certified all official letters and decrees; the chiefs of the Islamic judicial system (kādiaskers), who represented the religious establishment or the ulema and assisted the sultan and the grand vizier in legal matters; and the treasurers (defterdārs) of Anatolia and Rumelia (Ottoman provinces in the Balkans), who oversaw the royal revenues originating from Rumelia, Anatolia, Istanbul, and the northwestern coast of the Black Sea. The defterdārs communicated the daily transactions of the central treasury to the grand vizier and had to ensure that the troops stationed in the capital received their pay in a timely fashion.

  Prominent military commanders also attended the council. Beginning in the 16th century the āğā (āghā) or commander of the sultan’s elite infantry, the janissaries, took part in the council’s meetings. The commander of the sipāhis also attended. The members of this cavalry corps received revenue from timārs or fiefs, held by them in return for military service. Süleyman I (r. 1520–1566), who recognized the increasing importance of the imperial navy, appointed Grand Admiral Barbaros Hayreddin Pasha (Hayreddin Barbarossa) to the council. Although the chief admiral of the Ottoman fleet (Kapudān Pasha) attended the meetings of the imperial council, he reported directly to the sultan on the readiness of the imperial arsenal and the Ottoman naval forces. The grand vizier and his cabinet were accompanied by the çāv
uş bāşi, the chief of the palace officers, who maintained order and protocol at imperial council meetings and palace ceremonies, and who were dispatched as couriers to convey messages and execute orders. Clerks and scribes worked under the supervision of the reisülkütāb or chief of scribes, who acted as the head of the offices attached to the grand vizier. Each Ottoman high official maintained a large household, a kind of imperial palace in miniature, as a manifestation of his prestige and power.

  During the reign of Mehmed II (r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481) the imperial divān “met every day of the week, but in ensuing years this changed and the council met four times a week” on Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays (Bon: 33). The viziers who served in the divān arrived on horseback, with pomp and ceremony. They were surrounded by their retinues, including their sword bearers, valets, and seal bearers, and dressed “in solemn dress, according to the offices they held” (Della Valle: 13). The grand vizier arrived last, riding alone at the end of an imposing cavalcade. Until the reign of Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, the sultan participated in the deliberations of his ministers. As the power and the territory of the empire grew, the sultan became increasingly detached and stopped participating in the meetings of the divān. Instead, a square window especially cut to overlook the council chamber allowed the sultan to listen in on the deliberations of his ministers whenever he chose.